Monday, March 23, 2009

Early Friday morning, word came over the wire, or my Google Reader, that Pichet Ong's 10th street eateries, P'ONG and Batch were closing this very weekend!! What! Not the very same place where I first met Rachel and Nichelle? My little (wooden) heart can only take saying goodbye to some many things in one weekend!

But yes, it was true. Fortunately all hope is not lost as Pichet's creations will be available by special order until the bigger and better Batch opens in late summer. I still had to get on over there and have a goodbye cupcake or two.

After much agonizing, Bez chose the Carrot Salted Caramel for her FIRST Batch experience. "Mmm, delicious; that's some damn cupcake!"-her official opinion. I'd say she was a fan, and will probably be visiting the new store with me.

I originally was only going to go with a flavor I'd been dying to try, but hadn't found the chance, the Bacon Caramel Pumpkin. I'd been hoping to try it with Brownie since she's a big fan of putting bacon on cupcakes. Then I saw Rachel talking about the Spicy Apple Crisp. Decisions, decisions, I can't make them! I went with both.

The Bacon Caramel Pumpkin was heavy on the porcine taste, and the chocolate cake was moist and rich. For me, these two aspects overwhelmed the pumpkin and caramel flavor completely. If you're a fan of bacon and chocolate, this should definitely be on your "to try" cupcake list.

The Spicy Apple Crisp was interesting, in a good way. The apple cake is moist and flavorful; the crisp on top adds a nice crunch you don't usually get with cupcakes, and I was a huge fan of that. Then you had, what I believe, is chipotle jelly as the filling. Something about the texture of the jelly turned me off, too gelatinous for a cupcake, and if you bit wrong, the spice REALLY came through. I'm a fan of the spicy dessert, but I think this could be perfect sans spice.

8 comments:

I'm so sad that I'm going to have to wait until this fall to try their cupcakes! They're the only place with cupcakes that sound unusual enough for me, and I'll be down there in the beginning of April, then moving to the city in fall. Arg!

After hearing batch was closing I went today for the first time with my mom and a friend, and between the three of us we ate the carrot cake, red velvet, regular chocolate, bacon carmel, and also a butterscotch pudding.....not to mention i bought a spicy apple crisp, and maple rum raisin to go for home. Right now those two are waiting in my fridge and they are calling my name!! It was so sad to see them closin P'ong and the batch bakery was in moving mode, with cardboard boxes and Pichet's mom walking around with random spoons hmmm. I will definately miss those cupcakes :(

Glad to see that its not closing for good..my heart did a little flutter when I read the first lines!! We went to Batch at the beginning of March when we visited NY and tried a bacon cupcake - can't say I liked it all all but their vanilla cupcake was fab!